Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

The Picture is Talking To You

Some photography guides ask beginners, “What do you want your picture to say?”

It’s a novel concept, that visual media would actually speak to an audience. Photography’s goal, in many cases, is to relay a message through a photo. It doesn’t have to be a big message either; something simple will do. Document a party, or take a picture of your kid next to a dinosaur at the park. Simple messages. Some veteran photographers can portray a more complex message or even an entire story with one photo; the best example that comes to mind is “Migrant Mother” taken by Dorothea Lange.

But while I’ve been carrying a camera for nearly 35 years, I still feel more like a novice than a veteran because I’m always learning new things.

For me, the question of what my pictures say didn’t always have a crystal clear answer. Why? Because I’ve long been in the habit of taking photos of stuff. Stuff that catches my eye, stuff that’s in my way on the sidewalk. Shiny stuff. Stuff of life. During junior high I was tasked by the school newspaper to take pictures of “anything and everything.” They told me to take pictures of stuff, and that’s how it got started. Equipped with my Mom’s 1950s Brownie and an unlimited supply of Kodak Tri-X Pan black & white film from the school, I took roll after roll. A lot of the photos simply looked like stuff. No story. Some shots – like basketball or classroom portraits – came out darned well. But I look back on what archived shots I can locate and…well…I wonder what I was thinking! I could have used the story advice back then; maybe the act of training my eye to find a story before taking a photo would have helped me more, considering that I now have no idea why some photos were taken in the first place.

Those days are history. I still take pictures of stuff, but now it’s all about shooting stuff with a purpose. I’m looking to tell that story by taking a picture of a fence or bunch of moss on a rock. Sometimes I succeed; most times it still just looks like stuff. But there’s no harm in trying. Every now and then a stuff picture will catch my eye on a level other than, “Oh wow, it’s…a fence.”

Today’s blog post gives you an opportunity to share in the story those stuff photos tell!

I’ve posted five pictures here – all taken in Bellevue – and added one-line captions plus back stories. Here’s where you come in; how would you caption each of the photos?. For example I captioned the photo above, “I heart moss.” Share your caption ideas for each of the numbered photos in the comments below, and I’ll share the best one in next week’s post!

Back Story – Something about seeing a line of two or three police cars sitting in a left-hand turn lane just begged me to grab the camera. Of course, lifting and leveling my AE-1 and zoom lens to shoot through the windshield of my truck made me look like Decker McChesthair, Private Eye. I didn’t know what the resulting shot would look like, and admittedly it ended up being a bit grainy. From the time I’ve spent behind a film camera, I attribute this to three things:

1. Long zoom lenses suck light – If you take the same picture with two different lenses – one for close up and one for far away – the “long” lens photo will usually come out darker and less developed, unless you’re willing to pay a not-so-small fortune for a better zoom lens. If I had some way to hold the camera absolutely stable – while also leaning against the steering wheel – I could have used a slower shutter speed to let in more light.

2. Fast Film – The Kodak film I had loaded into this camera is high speed, which will typically make a “grainy” image in the end. That image will be even grainier if there isn’t much light or if you’re using a long lens (see above). It’s a balance of technique versus equipment, in order to get a good shot in a less-than-stellar environment. And sitting behind the wheel of a truck with a 30-year old Canon is most definitely less-than-stellar…

3. Expired – The film I used was manufactured in 2002, and expired in March 2003. The film quality degrades over time with all rolls of film, but the amount of degradation for each roll is not consistent. Some expired rolls will still make stunning prints, while others – like this roll – are more compromised. Why would I shoot with expired film? It’s usually cheap and sometimes free! It’s a good resource when experimenting with technique; that way full-price film isn’t part of the final cost.

My quick fix for really grainy color shots that I like is to mess with the contrast and make them black & white instead.

So what’s your caption for Photo #1?

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Photo #2Caption # 2 – “An Eastside commuter train through Bellevue should be blasting a horn at me to get off the tracks right now.”

Back Story – It’s no secret that I’m an advocate of light rail and commuter trains like The Sounder. I personally would love to see a passenger train running from Renton to Woodinville, or even to Snohomish. But as you can see from the photo, the tracks are quiet and – in my opinion – an unused but vital resource for the Eastside.

Since the former Woodinville Subdivision of the BNSF Railway is currently cut off at Wilburton and Woodinville, there is nothing train-sized to knock me off the tracks in Bellevue. This photo was taken behind Lowe’s, looking south towards where the tracks pass Lake Bellevue (historically known as “Lake Sturtevant”). This picture is actually made from two photos, one taken low (kneeling right on the tracks) and one taken high to capture the sky in a certain way. That day the clouds were very dramatic, and I wanted them in a photo no matter what; this shot was taken at roughly 10:00am, which put the sun just to the left of the tracks. Typically shooting into the sun is a death sentence for a photograph, but the cloud cover was such that the highlights were all in the right spots. Because I was shooting more-or-less into the sun, the resulting shot was very dark.

Thank goodness for “post production” tools.

I managed to bring out some detail, brighten the landscape, and create more drama in the clouds with Windows Live Photo Gallery. WLPG was also used to “stitch” the two shots together to make a square image. In the end the clouds have a story of their own, and in my opinion became the subject of the photo.

What would your caption say about clouds and rusty tracks?

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Photo #3

Caption #3 – “The clean aroma of the flowering tree made up for the fact that the 250 smelled like diesel fuel and bad naugahyde.”

Back Story – I’ve always been fascinated with pictures that show a man-made item over a colorful natural background. This photo was taken on April 20th, at the height of that tree’s blooming period. To look at it now, well let’s say it doesn’t even look like the same tree. In order to make the sign look like it was right up against the tree, I used the maximum zoom setting on my $35 digital camera and stood very very still. It captured some great colors that day.

After taking this photo I placed it in “Creative Commons,” which is a way that I can keep the rights to the photo but allow people to use it for blog posts etc without having to ask my permission. So long as someone attributes the work to me, the photo can be used freely. Sharing rocks.

Back Story – 1918 and 1988 all in a single square photograph? Dare I say that one building is the antithesis to the other? One is a small unassuming structure from Bellevue’s early days, while the other one overwhelms the scene like Joan Collins in a cat fight. Views like this one are slowly disappearing from the Bellevue landscape, as the old buildings are being torn down to make room newer larger structures.

We were on a family Slurpee run to the 7-Eleven in Old Bellevue when I saw this shot from the parking lot. My brain quickly figured out that if I had a zoom lens I could make the hotel look like it was mashed up against the old house. So a few days later I revisited the spot with my camera and long lens. The resulting shot disappointed me a bit because of the graininess, but since this was on the same high-speed expired-film roll as Photo #1 I just decided to tweak it a bit to make the photo presentable.

What caption can you mash together for photo #4?

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Photo #5

Caption #5 – “Welcome to Mmmmmphhew.”

Back Story – From a car it looked like a big white rectangle; only up close did you see the remnants of painted details that welcomed travelers of a bygone decade. Meer feet away from this Bellevue boundary sign was a tall colorful marker welcoming drivers in the other direction to Redmond – a lavish middle finger to its weathered counterpart across the street.

I love my city, and in my opinion this sign was just plain awful. So I sent an email to the City with the above photo attached; after that a very strange thing happened.

The entire sign disappeared.

Literally gone, pole and all, within two hours. It was there when I took my son to school, and gone when I headed out to work. What the? I followed up with the City and found out it was removed for a reason.

“Thanks for reminding us how bad this sign looked,” the contact wrote by email. The sign I alerted him to was installed on NE 24th Street in July 1992, and was one of a few original boundary signs left after being in service for nearly twenty years. Replacement cost would have been roughly $70, but since these were specially-made signs back in the day an exact estimate isn’t known.

The reason it was removed for good was that the City is phasing out this design of boundary sign.

It’s in preparation for a project that would someday replace them all with newer and nicer boundary signs that include landscaping. An example of that new sign was installed at NE 1st Street and Lake Washington Blvd. But due mainly to tight budgets, plus luke-warm public response to an online survey related to the signs, the project to replace them is currently on hold.

Can you think of caption for #5?

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Hopefully the photos above say something to you too; so share what you think that message should be! Next week the winning caption will be posted here, along with another trip into the city streets. Until that day…

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.